Brussels, 17/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - Following a year and a half of stalemate, discussions resumed within the bodies of the Council of the EU on 14 February, on the proposed regulation of July 2010 aiming to modify EU legislation (Directive 2001/18/EC) to give the member states the option, within their borders, of banning or restricting the cultivation of GMOs authorised within the EU, as long as the reasons given are related to factors other than health or the environment - as risk and environmental assessments are the exclusive domain of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). And on Wednesday 19 February, the ambassadors of the 28, meeting within Coreper, will discuss this issue as part of preparations for the Environment Council of 3 March, where a debate on the subject is scheduled (see EUROPE 11018 and 11017).
This is a collateral effect of the row over the Commission's intention to authorise the cultivation of the genetically modified maize TC 1507 by Pioneer in the EU despite the opposition of 19 member states, and Tonio Borg, European Commissioner for Health, has high hopes for the adoption of this legislation, which the Commission has, since 2010, seen as the solution to the permanent situation of deadlock that meets every request for authorisation for the cultivation of individual GMOs. This would indeed be the best way for the Commission and the Council to be able to stop having to keep referring the responsibility for a simple question of fact back and forth between each other - this question of fact being the inability of the member states to approve or reject a proposed authorisation by qualified majority, which systematically leads the Commission having to decide itself whether to authorise the GMO. This situation came about as the result of a comitology procedure which has come in for a great deal of flak, but which was devised by the institutions of the EU. Most of the member states feel that the time has come to revive this proposal, which has lain dormant since June 2012, the Presidency having noted that a blocking minority (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Slovakia, Belgium, Cyprus and Bulgaria) opposed this proposed “cultivation à la carte”, for various reasons, such as the risk of the harmonisation of the single market (see EUROPE 10632 and 10571).
Within the Council's working group, which was convened by the Greek Presidency on 14 February, it now appears that the United Kingdom (which is in favour of the cultivation authorisation for Pioneer's 1507 TC maize) will now get behind this legislation, which would give the member states an opt out. Slovakia is still hesitating. The invocable reasons proposed by the Commission, which are all of an ethical or moral nature, are maintaining public order, public morality (concerns of a religious or philosophical nature), the assurance for producers and consumers to be able to procure GM-free products, the preservation of traditional agricultural practices, environmental policy objectives and town and country planning decisions. France, Germany and Belgium, on the other hand, still have reservations, concerned at the possibility of rushing through an ill-conceived text which is not respond to the expectations expressed at the General Affairs Council of 11 February. France and Germany are, moreover, working together on a proposal to review the legislation in order to allow the member states to exercise their freedom of choice over objective criteria with the required legal certainty, in other words without the risk of having their national measures overturned by the Court of Justice of the EU or the WTO. The cost/economic advantage criterion for the culture of GMO would be one of the objective criteria which they may propose to take into account. (AN/transl.fl)